Tuesday, July 1, 2008

No, I did not pee in the pool

She told me it would be easy. Not a problem, not expensive... easy as pie she said. She lied. Okay, maybe it wasn't exactly a lie. Maybe just a creative distortion of the truth...either that or I am an idiot, not sure which.

The house we bought this year has a pool. (funny, I just typed poop by mistake. must be a Freudian slip of the finger) Did you know that information on caring for your pool is a closely guarded secret entrusted to only the very special. Try googling "my pool water is yellow" and see what you get. nothing, nada, zip. You get a bunch of people promising that they have the answer to your dilemma and for a few dollars they would be happy to share their knowledge. I am so not going to do that. I am having family over for the holiday and my pool must be clear, so I ordered a book from amazon.com which will no doubt answer none of my questions... at least not in English.

Since I don't have time for this transaction to be complete before the whole family is here to gawk (I mean swim) including my mom, whose pool it used to be, I decided to brave the pool store to talk to the pool guy (who, by the way looks nothing like the ones in the movies:)

Of course I looked like a complete idiot (told you) because I read that I could take water samples into my local pool supply store and they would test the water so they would be able to tell me what my problem was. I also read that the readings could be different at different depths and since I didn't know which reading would be important, I took three. And since I didn't have any of those scientific looking containers in which to take my water samples I just used sippy cups. The blue one was a sample from the surface right over by the stairs that are BROWN. The red sippy cup was from about 18 inches below the surface which I collected by holding the cup upside down until I was up to my shoulder, flipped it back over and put the top on under water. The pink cup was a little tricky because for some reason the deepest part of the pool is not stained at all. It is down there taunting me with its sparkling blue bottom. Why?? I don't know. I just tell the kids to stay down really deep. That's where the water is the cleanest. Collecting that was fun. I have had both of my eardrums ruptured in my life and getting more than a few feet under water is excruciating for me. But, ahh, the joy of success... in one try, no less.

I took my professional looking samples in to the pool store to have them tested. The pool man must have never read that he should take readings from different depths because he looked a bit confused. Maybe it was the sippy cups.

Note: do you know what happens if you fill a sippy cup under the water and then put the top on under the water so as not to contaminate it with surface water?? When you take the top off it is so full that it pours all over you. (sorry, Mr. pool guy)

With all of my ingenuity all of the readings were the same, who knew? Mr. Pool guy says "you need to add a bottle of stain remover" ($35) I say, "you told me that two weeks ago and as soon as I shocked it, the stain came back". Mr. Pool guys says, "you can't shock the pool after you put stain remover in!!" NOW YOU TELL ME!!! Apparently this mistake will mean the the stain is so bad now that I need TWO bottles of stain remover ($35 each) YIKES!!

New instructions...half a bag of shock for now. On Thursday put both bottles of stain remover directly into the pool, concentrating on the worst of the stain. For the next 10 days or so, I am supposed to clean the filter (20 minute process) daily and basically lay hands on it until it is ready to be shocked again... I think I will just show it the bill for the chemicals.